


all eyes on me, your eyes on me

by weaponizedsoul



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, man this entire fic is just like "i'm gay and yearning can you tell?", post 160
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-12
Updated: 2019-12-12
Packaged: 2021-02-18 04:09:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21771523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weaponizedsoul/pseuds/weaponizedsoul
Summary: With each step they take out of the safehouse, Jon feels more and more like he’s being spread apart over this new world — and, at the same time, like he’s a radio slowly coming into tune with a horrible signal. He can barely feel Martin’s hand in his. He remembers following Martin down the corridor just outside the archives, trying not torunafter him, not succeeding. He feels grass under his feet. He feels cold wood floor under his feet.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 6
Kudos: 140





	all eyes on me, your eyes on me

**Author's Note:**

> title from "Sinking Man" by Of Monsters and Men

It’s slow going, through the broken landscape outside of the safehouse. They agreed they should leave, get to London, find the others (this was Jon’s idea), find Jonah Magnus (this was Martin’s). (His face closed off when Jon explained what happened, but Jon Knew what he was thinking). Jon finds he Knows so many things, now.

With each step they take out of the safehouse, Jon feels more and more like he’s being spread apart over this new world — and, at the same time, like he’s a radio slowly coming into tune with a horrible signal. He can barely feel Martin’s hand in his. He remembers following Martin down the corridor just outside the archives, trying not to _run_ after him, not succeeding. He feels grass under his feet. He feels cold wood floor under his feet.

It’s useful, in a way, though. He steers them away from where the monsters are. Most of them are in the village, where the people are. Some of them are waiting in the hidden places outside it, to catch the people who run away from the monsters in the village. They pass several cottages that still have doors, and locks on the doors, Jon wordlessly leading them on. Nothing, after all, is more frightening than being frightened in a place you thought was safe.

In the end, they haven’t gotten far at all when they start to get tired. They find a house, abandoned for a while. The door works, but barely. It isn’t the kind of place that Looks Safe. It isn’t the kind of place that looks particularly unsafe. And Jon can’t feel it, like he can feel what must be every part of the world where They have been let in. (He feels the awful heat on his hand, but it isn’t his hand, it’s on someone else’s face, a face that is burning and blistering under what isn’t his hand.) ( _They_ are still not all the way there, yet.) (It won’t be long until They are.)

Jon puts his hand on the floorboards while Martin checks the other rooms, just to be safe. The floorboards are rough, and cold. Jon still half-expects them to start smoking, even after the heat fades from his mind. Jon digs his nails into them, hard. It hurts, but at least it’s _his._ It still surprises him when Martin comes back, sits next to him on the floor, firmly takes his hand. Jon leans into him. He feels Martin’s chest moving.

The fog rolls in later. Of course it would be that. It stays outside the house, but Jon can feel the mist settling on his skin. Martin can’t, he Knows, but Jon still remembers things that happened to him. He remembers sitting in Elias’s office — Peter’s office? His office? — for days on end and never seeing a soul, only leaving very late at night when that particular kind of silence settles, the kind you get when all the people-noises have just — stopped.

He remembers noticing how you can sort of sense the constant background noise of people walking, people shifting, people carrying things, unwrapping things, people moving, chairs scraping against the floor, even when you aren’t really hearing it. He remembers hearing it more and more strongly, moving into the foreground, until he’s retreating into the fog most days just to get away from it.

Martin is holding him, Jon, and saying something, but Jon can’t make it out through the emptiness. He’s vaguely aware that he’s standing in front of a window. He remembers walking through the corridors of the Institute late at night — he remembers himself, Jon, walking through the corridors late at night. He hadn’t been able to sleep, which was admittedly normal, but usually he didn’t stray very far outside his room in the archives, for fear he’d run into anyone. Which was stupid. Everyone else who stayed at the Institute this late slept closer to the archives than he was now, except for—

“Martin.”

Who only stopped walking for a moment. Who looked at Jon with such tiredness, like it was Jon he was tired of.

“I told you not to find me,” he said, sighing.

He was moving to the side, as if to simply brush past Jon, but instead he stopped next to him. Jon didn’t think he had meant to.

“I— I don’t _think_ I was,” Jon said. He really hadn’t thought he was. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’ll…”

He meant to say _I’ll leave, I’ll stop bothering you,_ but he didn’t move either.

Martin’s arm is so close to his.

“I really can’t keep talking to you,” Martin says, leaning in.

Jon laughs a little. “Hardly talking,” he says.

_“Jon.”_

Martin sounds — exasperated, but it’s like he used to sound, when he used to make Jon eat and rest.

Jon’s shoulder is just brushing Martin’s arm, but he doesn’t want to move closer, to draw attention to it, to break this fragile moment. He’s painfully aware that he and Martin are still facing away from each other. He doesn’t look.

“I know. I—” _I trust you. I care about you so much._ “I know.”

Jon’s foot shuffles slowly across the floor, finds Martin’s sooner than Jon thinks it should have. He doesn’t look at Martin, not really, but down to where their shoes are touching.

“I want to see you,” he says, before he can think about it. _I don’t know if I’ll see you again,_ he doesn’t say.

He doesn’t have a plan, exactly, for what he’s going to do, or when he’s going to do it, but… he knows when he does walk into the Buried, he probably won’t walk out again. To be this close to Martin for what might be the last time and not even see him—

Martin sighs. “Alright.”

The pressure of his arm disappears as he turns. Jon looks up. Martin has this _look_ on his face, half unamused, half desperately fond. Jon wants to lean into it, to look away from its intensity, to never stop looking at it, to never have to think about what it means. If he’s being honest with himself, he just _wants._ They’re very close to each other. Martin laughs, quietly, nervously, but he doesn’t say anything. Jon is standing on his toes, he realizes. They’re very close to each other. Jon knows what he’s doing only a split second before he’s doing it. All at once, he leans forward, and closes his eyes, and just brushes his lips over Martin’s — and then Martin is gone, and Jon is standing in an empty hallway.

Jon is standing in an empty hallway but it’s in a different place, a place that does not exist, and Jon is standing rooted to the ground under a tree as a creature with too many teeth comes barreling towards him, and Jon is standing underneath the Eye watching a woman being crushed by a train car, watching a man drown under a crawling wave of ants, watching Naomi Hearn plead to him from the bottom of a grave, and Jon is standing in the Lonely, but he can’t find the way anymore and he’s lost, adrift, and he _can’t see Martin—_

And someone is calling his name. _Martin_ is calling his name.

“Look at me,” Martin says, and Jon does.

He’s hit by a wave of sharp sensation — Martin’s bare feet on the cold floorboards, his arms around Jon pressing him into his chest, his heart pounding wildly with fear, the effort it takes to keep his voice steady.

“I want to see you,” Martin says, although Jon still can’t hear him — only Knows what he’s saying.

It’s hard to do, when Jon doesn’t know where he is, even who he is, but he Knows where Martin is, and that’s enough. Jon opens up, blindly, and he Sees himself at the same moment that Martin does. The floorboards they’re standing on are the same floorboards, he can feel them because Martin can feel him feeling them. He can feel his body shaking because Martin feels it too. He can see Martin’s face, because Martin is Seeing through his eyes.

He can hear Martin again. He’s saying, “You’re here, Jon. You’re here because I’m here and I’m here _with you.”_

“I’m here. I’m with you,” Jon repeats, and the Seeing fades, and he’s just standing in a room with Martin.

Martin laughs. “My voice really sounds like that doesn’t it,” he says, and his voice is shaking now.

And he kisses Jon, softly, just a brush of lips against lips, the way Jon likes, but for a very long time.

The fog recedes.


End file.
